


I Dream of a Love Like You

by hollowes



Series: Fumblings [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Beloved TV Show That Everyone Hates Continues to Not Be Gay, F/F, To The Bafflement Of A Nation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 21:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7009375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollowes/pseuds/hollowes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She thought breaking the curse would be different. Like, vials of blood and a circle of candles and salt or something, some form of deliberate preparation. She didn't think it would be so accidental, how one day when the sunlight caught Regina just right, the playful twinkle in her eyes, her lips pulled in a teasing smile, and Emma felt so light, and she may have thought, <em>I could make a family out of this</em>. She just leaned over and kissed her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Dream of a Love Like You

 

Emma didn't know what to expect when the curse broke.

 

She figured Regina tried to tell her. She would become somber the moment her smiles or laughs became a little too free, the moment her eyes held a little too much spark in them. She would say,  _you don't understand. I was a monster_. Emma would reply,  _you aren't anymore_ , and they would reach a stalemate, where Regina wanted to believe her but couldn't manage.Emma had gotten to know and had grown accustomed to Regina's brief, tender touches. The way her fingers would brush against her hand, the nape of her neck, the dip of her waist. Regina would never be the type to dramatically kiss her in the middle of the street, but she was so giving with affection in the most subtle ways that Emma was filled to the brim. Emma who never knew what it felt like to be so wanted and so casually cherished. The Evil Queen was a strange abstraction she couldn't picture.So no, whatever Emma was expecting, she was nowhere close.–

 

 

She thought breaking the curse would be different. Like, vials of blood and a circle of candles and salt or something, some form of deliberate preparation. She didn't think it would be so accidental, how one day when the sunlight caught Regina just right, the playful twinkle in her eyes, her lips pulled in a teasing smile, and Emma felt so light, and she may have thought, _I could make a family out of this._ She just leaned over and kissed her.

 

The brightness flashed behind her eyes and the flowing, electric feeling that usually hums at Regina's touch flared white hot. When she opened her eyes, Regina was staring at her with an expression that was morphing from surprised, to realization, to downright terrified. Henry trampled downstairs.  _Mom! Emma!_ _Regina?_ Emma reach for her and Regina grabs and squeezes Emma's forearms in a vise grip. Panic starts to climb in her when she hears Henry says,  _you did it, you broke the curse._ And Regina's voice fucking  _trembles_  when she says  _yes._  


 

Emma hysterically wonders if she's going to have to fight a dragon or something.

 

But all the while, through the angry mob, and the sudden revealing of her family tree that never quite settles as it should, thrumming in the back of her mind, the leech of a thought: _I could make a family out of this._

 

–

 

 

Making a family and keeping a family, as it turns out, is impossible in the chaos magnet of fucking Storybrooke, Maine. As Emma falls into hats, meets a mother who desperately wants to be her mother and desperately wants to start over in the being-a-mother department, bites down the urge to fistfight a wraith, bites down the urge to fistfight an ex boyfriend and a pirate who don’t understand that she’s not a prize at the finish line of a pissing contest. And if she was a prize, the contest is over and there is a clear winner. 

 

Along with a mom and a dad, Emma guesses, who insist that Regina is the pinnacle of evil, and the only reason she is doing this is to get back at Snow White. 

 

Emma doesn’t point out how self-centered it is to think that after 28 years and a son, that Snow is Regina’s priority in any way. 

 

And it’s really beginning to get on her nerves how little control she has. Being a savior feels more and more like being a fire extinguisher against a raging volcano. Things constantly shake and barely settle with Emma just wanting a moment to catch her footing. She crawls out of a well with a resolve the size of this shitty state to never be separated from her family again, but still loses Henry. And in their quest to bring him back, she feels herself losing Regina, who suddenly says things like _gut the bitch, Charming._

  
_Who the fuck are you,_ she shouts at Regina one day, having dragged her away from camp. _I don’t fucking understand what’s happening._

 

  
_I don’t care if you understand. I am who my son needs me to be,_ Regina replies, and Emma feels hurt, and doesn’t know how to ask Regina to be who Emma needs her to be.

 

–

 

 

Henry is next to her in the bug. His safety is a bittersweet victory, and as they’re driving away she _misses,_ even after she can't remember what.

 

 

–

 

 

A fact about Emma’s year in Boston: 

 

Most night when she falls asleep, she dreams about her. Her eyes are dark, a warm moonless night. A violent black hole, an inescapable event horizon. She whispers things to Emma in a language Emma doesn’t understand. She adores Emma, and Emma helplessly adores back. When Emma wakes up, the loss sinks her.

 

  
_You look sad, Ma._ Henry sometimes says, and his eyes don’t always remind her of Neal.

 

 

–

 

A wrench is thrown into her relatively calm life when there’s a knock on her door. Some guy looking like he’s going door to door promoting Captain Morgan is standing there, and proceeds to kiss her. 

 

She knees him in the balls and slams the door in his face. 

 

Of course, he doesn’t go away. He stalks her and Emma threatens to put him in a shallow grave if he doesn’t fuck off away from her and her son. 

 

Its then that she feels it though, an unsettling magnetism. A tug in the back of her mind that draws her eyes to him when she isn’t searching. A sliver of a memory that shouldn’t exist. 

 

She watches a TV show where the lead woman is perplexingly in love with some smug, smarmy asshole and she throws the remote across the room. 

 

She swears to Christ if this is the universe trying to tell her she’s supposed to date this guy she’s going to raze the earth.

 

–

 

  
_You have five minutes,_ Emma says. _Convince me._

He smirks at her and Emma mentally calculates how much damage she can do to his face before somebody drags her off him. 

 

–

 

He’s crazy.

 

He’s crazy and she’s fucking stupid, because she’s about to drink some unidentified liquid from an alcohol brand mascot. 

 

If she ends up dead, she probably deserves it.

 

–

 

The potion brings back her memories in a strange, hazy way. She remembers them, but in a way she murkily remembers a movie she watched too many years ago. Like a story that probably isn’t hers, conflicting with memories that say they definitely shouldn’t be. 

 

She brings Henry along and his complaints die when he catches sight of Hook. 

 

_Ma… do we know him?_

  
_I guess so, kid._ Emma responds. _Everything is a bit… fuzzy right now. But we’ll figure it out._

  
_Besides,_ Emma says as she watches Henry wearily eye Hook. _Your ma could take him._

  
_Can you take him to a laundromat?_ Henry mumbles, and Emma laughs loudly. 

 

–

 

It all comes to a painfully sharp relief when she sees her. 

 

  
_Goddammit,_ Emma says. She’s making a bee-line towards Regina and kisses her so hard she thinks she tastes blood. 

 

It rushes through them, and she hears Henry shout _oh my god, mom!_

Emma pulls back as Henry crashes into them, and Regina’s eyes are on her, boring into her while she holds Henry.

 

  
_Never again,_ Emma says to her. _I’m not leaving. I don’t give a fuck about curses, never again._

 

  
_We belong right here, goddammit._ Emma babbles, and Regina nods and holds them so tight it hurts.

 

 

–

 

 

In typical Emma luck, that falls apart too. 

 

She notices him hanging around. He’s attractive in a conventional sense, and has great hair, and he has an ease with Regina she hadn’t seen with anybody outside Henry, and Emma forces down her insecurity. They’re here now. They’re here. That’s all that matters, right?

 

–

 

Later, after the emotional exhaustion of Snow and David’s swarming and clinging, she removes her boots in the foyer of 108 Mifflin Street, while Regina gently clicks the door shut. Henry says _I’m hungry_ and Emma relates how Henry is housing a gluttonous demon that demands sacrifices in the form of food every 3 hours. Regina laughs, but there’s just a hint of sadness in the set of her mouth, a mother that no longer knows her child. Emma and Henry lock eyes and he noticed, of course he did.

 

  
_What would mi querido niño like to eat?_ Regina asked as she walks further into the house, and Henry proceeded to list every food he’s ever eaten in his life, Emma following behind them agreeing with every suggestion. 

 

  
_Are you sure you’re an adult?_ Regina asks her. 

 

  
_I asked Henry last week what a ‘Kik’ was. I’m extremely out of touch with the millennials, Regina. Plus, check it out._ Emma leans close to Regina and stage-whispers, _stocks and bonds._

She receives an eye-roll and a chuckle, and Emma flashes Henry a thumbs up. 

 

This is definitely working. 

 

–

 

When they’re finally alone, because it’s late and Henry is in bed, Emma doesn’t know what to do. Is it too forward to say _I’m starving for you, every part of me,_ because it’s been a year but also not and she isn’t sure if enduring the year or enduring this strange disjunction is worse, but she just needs. 

 

Regina must read her like a book. She laughs and Emma blushes. 

 

_You’re not subtle, Ms. Swan._

Regina touches her like she used to, brief and tender. _But, it’s… can we just... talk?_

  
_Yeah, yeah._ Emma holds her hand and smiles, _yeah, of course._

And she has no concept of putting her guard up, of preparing for anything at all. Why would she? Regina is her family, is her… something. Something very serious who she breaks dark curses with by smooching. Why should she have her guard up? So when Emma asks, _who is that guy you were talking to?,_ as casually as she humanly can, and Regina answers, she swears her stomach acid turns to glass. 

 

–

 

She shouts, mostly. She shouts and Regina briefly tried to sooth her before crumbling and shouting back. 

 

Emma has no concept of holding a relationship together through this kind of storm. Up until now, it’s been outside forces, evil bullshit magic that threatened them, that forced them apart. Emma can fight that. But _soulmates?_ Who the fuck do you point to and pick a fight with when it’s fate, omnipotent and intangible. 

 

Quickly she’s reunited with a feeling of inevitable ending, of inevitable abandonment. She doesn’t think about Regina not hesitating to bring _her_ home, to touch her and cook for her, to be with her defenselessly. To choose her without hesitation while a soulmate stood by.

 

  
_I guess that year went by pretty easy for you, didn’t it,_ Emma shouts, _with your convenient soulmate and replacement child._

  
_You,_ Regina hisses, rearing up on Emma with a deadliness that fit her like a glove, _may be replaceable, Emma Swan. But don’t you ever imply that my son is._

And just like that, Emma finds herself out in the cold. 

 

_–_

 

_You’re supposed to be in bed._

 

Henry shrugs and sits next to her. He found her by the docks while she was trying to hold herself together, and it doesn't surprise her that he came. Henry, their thoughtful son, growing up so tenaciously kind against the unkindness Storybrooke sprouts like weeds. Who else could be attributed to that if not Regina? Emma squeezes her shoulders inward and her soul is just rising and falling, trying to decide if it's sinking it hell or ascending to heaven because she's dying of love.

 

_I’m sorry you had to hear that. You shouldn’t be out here. Regina’s gonna kill me if she finds out you snuck out._

_I don’t know why you’re so stubborn._

 

Emma sighs. She was hoping to escape this conversation and wallow in self-pity for a bit longer. 

 

 _What?_ Henry shrugs again.  _You talk about fate a lot and how awful it is, even though it brought us both here._ _Thats not really the same thing-_ _Come on, ma._ Henry interrupts.Emma levels him with a look, and at least he has the decency to look sheepish.  _Look, before everything, I was convinced that fate was the Savior defeating the Evil Queen, like with a fight or something, and that would break the curse. I didn't think it could mean anything else. That there could be other ways to defeat the evil queen._ Henry looks at Emma expectantly and at her blank look he exhales, exasperated.  _I was interpreting it wrong. You defeated the Evil Queen, but you didn't fight, you fell in love with her, and mom fell in love with you, too. The both of us with her was what finally broke the curse. I'm saying, maybe you're looking at this wrong._ Emma snorts,  _what other interpretation could there possibly be for 'soulmate'? Seems pretty black and white to me._  


 

  
_Yeah, well, t_ _he_ _book seemed pretty black and white to me, too._ Henry says. _I don’t know the soulmate rules, ma. But you were really mean to my mom, and she loves you. She loves us. You’re the one who told me not to throw love like that away._

 

Emma shifts uncomfortably.  _You should apologize. Mom will forgive you._ _How do you know?_ Henry shrugs.  _True love, ma. Nothing beats that._  


 

  
_… Do you think she still…_ Emma gesticulates and conveys nothing.  _… with me. That._

 

 _Um, yeah, Emma. Duh._ She nudges Henry with her shoulder, and smiles, despite everything.  _Okay._ They stay that way for a while. Emma shuts her eyes, and wills her fear to drift a little further away with the tide. _\--_

Henry had offered to give them some time to talk by spending the following day with Snow and Charming.

 

 

_Kid, she spent a year without us. She doesn't want to spend more time away from you. Spend the day with your mom. I'm sure she has so many questions for you. Text me when you're going to bed, all right? I'll talk to her, I promise._

 

 _I'm not worried,_ Henry replied, smiling at her like he still believed she was full of miracles.

 

_–_

 

 _Mom's in her study,_ Henry says as he lets her in. The coil of stress in her stomach had been steadily mounting for the past few hours, coming to a head here in Regina's foyer. Emma feels sick. She tries to distract herself by asking Henry a myriad of mundane questions, but he gives her a stern look. 

_Nice try, Emma. I told her you were coming._

 

 

He gives her a hug that lasts a little longer than it usually does before climbing back up the stairs to his room. 

 

Building up the courage to knock took her longer than she'd like to admit.Regina is sitting with her arm pressed protectively against her stomach.  _Hi,_  Emma says weakly. Regina looks up at her, contemplates her for a moment, then looks away.  _Can we talk?_ Emma asksRegina chuckles humorlessly. _H_ _ave more accusations to throw at me?_ _No,_ Emma replies. She fixates on her shoes and tries to remember that humans need to breathe to continue living.  _I was being unfair, earlier._ _Yes,_ Regina agrees, and says nothing else. 

 

–

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emma briefly remembers a foster dad she had.

 

  
_The media n' TV n' stuff_ , he slurred, _they make you think fighting for people means you fight to keep them, preventing them from leaving. That's a load of crap. People don't keep other people. We aren't endangered feathery birds in a zoo._

 

He looked at Emma and shook his head. _No, when we fight for people, we fight against ourselves. Against our selfish natures. We fight to change, to be something better for someone else. We fight to understand, and be understood. We're all constantly in motion and negotiating with each other, trying to agree on a direction to move in. When you stop fighting, it means you're no longer willing to change._

 

Emma asked after her foster mom, and he replies, _that fight’s over._

 

He polished off his drink, and many more after, and Emma ran away when there was no food left.

 

it didn’t strike her until much later that when it came to her, he didn’t put up a fight at all. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

–

 

Emma fidgets and rubs her eyes, feeling them sting. She'd always subscribed to the ideas of emotional distance, of detachment, of no strings attached to strangle you and rip you to shreds. When she reached a point in any relationship where she was asked to commit herself, to fight to keep it, the answer had always been a resounding no _._  


  
_Subscribed_ ,because she came to this fucking fake magic town in Maine. Here, with her son, with her son's adoptive mother, she forced herself to curb her urges to detach, to suppress her self defense mechanisms. It would be easier to fight off Rumpelstiltskin with a thimble, honestly.

 

 _Please,_ Emma whispers,  _talk to me. Please._ The silence deafens her, until Regina breathes deep and finally looks at her.  _Being back in the Enchanted Forest without Henry, without you... with your parents,_ Regina says  _parents_ with some disdain,  _I was afraid. Afraid of what it would mean to be back there again, heartbroken, alone, and... powerful. When I met Robin, and discovered who he was... he's a good man, Emma. I needed goodness, goodness that isn't the saccharine and naive variety of Snow and Charming. So yes, we became close, but..._ _Emma-_ Regina starts.   
  
Emma steels herself, and hopes that if she's about to fucking get dumped that her body will have the courtesy of not curling into itself and screaming.A ghost of a smile touches Regina's lips. _C_ _ome here._ Emma's heart leaps and she feels it pounding in her throat, standing in front of Regina who rose to meet her, their height difference more obvious now with her heels off. Regina reaches for Emma's hand and squeezes, almost to the point of pain, and Emma squeezes back and hopes.

 

_I should have predicted your reaction. I should have been more patient. For that, I'm sorry. When I said… when I said you were replaceable, I didn’t..._

 

Regina loosens her grip, only to twine their fingers together and squeeze fiercely again. 

 

  
_It took me 28 years and a son to overcome Daniel's death, but I would have gone to the grave just as heartbroken as I was the day you left. Emma Swan, who kissed me and broke a curse centuries in the making. Who brought magic to my doorstep in a realm where there should be none. Who gave me Henry, and defeated the Evil Queen simply by driving your atrocious deathtrap into Storybrooke._ _What is a soulmate compared to you?_

 

Emma has had her share of near-death experiences, but the relief of not dying is infinitesimal when compared to the relief of not having lost Regina. So she kisses her, hard and desperate, until she has to stop because she's sobbing into Regina's shirt, and God, she is too relieved to even feel embarrassed.   _I'm sorry,_  Emma says.

  
_I love you, you idiot._ Regina replies, and Emma supposes she knew, but it's such a Regina way to finally,  _finally_ say it. 

 

 _We're going upstairs,_ Emma says, wiping her eyes with her palms and leading Regina to her bedroom,  _and I'm going to make love to you and put a small dent in the whole Boston Amnesia Year Without You thing,_ Emma locks Regina's door and starts pulling off Regina's shirt, _and you're going to say 'I love you' about sixty more times._ _Sixty?_ Regina asks playfully, toying with the button of Emma's jeans.  _Sixty, sixty-thousand, whatever. We'll play it by ear._ They kiss and Emma feels like she can breathe again. 

–

 

 

  
_Simply by driving my atrocious car into Storybrooke? Does that mean-_

 

Regina roughly nips at Emma's jaw.  _Don't be obnoxious, Swan._ Emma grins, and she doesn't know who Regina thinks she's dealing with, but she'll be dead before she stops being obnoxious about this. 

 

 

_–_

 

 

  
_I talked to Robin,_ Emma starts. Her night shift just ended, and she’s sitting on the edge of the bed ( _Our bed,_ Emma thinks, and tries to quell the butterflies in her stomach by thinking about baseball. When that doesn’t work, she thinks about baseball while everyone is on fire.) watching Regina get ready for her day to start. Regina freezes. When she turns towards her, Emma catches her glancing at her hands, and she laughs.

 

_I didn’t fight him Regina. We just talked. He… asked me if we wanted to have breakfast with him and Roland._

  
_Ah,_ Regina replies, and looks unconvinced. 

 

_I said yes._

Regina gives her a probing look, and Emma fidgets. Regina had been ginger about the topic of Robin up until that point, rarely bringing him up in conversation or spending time with him. 

 

  
_He’s your friend._ Emma squeezes her hands into fists. _You shouldn’t have to segregate parts of your life because I’m insecure._

Regina cups Emma face.  _All I need is you and Henry, Emma. If-_

  
_No,_ Emma says. _I’m fighting for you, Regina. I’ll always fight for you._

She kisses her before Regina can ask. Her eyes are heavy and her body is sluggish, and things aren’t perfect, but there’s plenty of fight in her, Emma thinks. Plenty.

**Author's Note:**

> part 2 and lots of handwaving cause i don't remember shit about the plot besides the big stuff.


End file.
